7:00pm – Lincoln: Prelude to the Presidency
To commemorate Abraham Lincoln’s 200th birthday back in 2009, this documentary immerses viewers in a critical, but often overlooked, time in the stateman’s life. LINCOLN: PRELUDE TO THE PRESIDENCY pieces together a critical 23-year period (1837-1860) through interviews with noted historians, researchers and experts, and re-enactments filmed at historic sites in central Illinois. Prominent scholars Doris Kearns Goodwin and Orville Vernon Burton (The Age of Lincoln) describe how Lincoln’s formative experiences as a young lawyer on Illinois’ Eighth Judicial Circuit informed his views on the issues he would eventually face as president, including several cases involving slavery.

8:00pm – Looking for Lincoln, Part I 9:00pm – Looking for Lincoln, Part II
February 2009 marked the 200th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s birth. This series, endorsed by the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission, features historians Doris Kearns Goodwin and Henry Louis Gates Jr. in an exploration of how Abraham Lincoln the man was transformed into Abraham Lincoln the legend. The documentary tells Lincoln’s story as it was shaped by our nation in the years immediately following his death.

10:00pm – Heart of the Civil War
Recounting critical battles of the Civil War, The Heart of the Civil War tells stories from some of the most fought-over U.S. territory during the War Between the States. Between 1861 and 1865, Confederate and Union forces clashed again and again for control of strategic points throughout three counties in west-central Maryland – as the war marched north-to-south from the confederacy to the union, and back again. The Heart of the Civil War recounts the war’s far-reaching impact on the lives of ordinary but battle-weary Marylanders caught up in now-famous local battles, the conflicted struggles of believers in the confederate cause living on Union soil, and the turbulent, unpredictable politics of war that ultimately helped to preserve the Union.